Garnet

A family of gemstones, most often dark red (darker than a ruby). It can come in many different shades, mostly in the red-orange-brown family, but sometimes blue, green, yellow, and so dark as to seem black.

Types of garnets:

Almandine is a deep red which gets its color from iron. This is what most people think of when they think of garnets. Occasionally inclusions in these stones form an asterism, or a star garnet.

Tsavorite is a light emerald green garnet primarily found in Kenya. Its color is caused by vanadium in the stone. It's one of the most expensive garnets because it has a limited supply and a popular color.

Demantoid (also called andradite) is a rare green garnet (light green like a peridot) which was discovered in Russia in the mid-1800s. It often contains curved asbestos fibers inside the stone. It was fairly popular in Victorian times, and jewelry from that era with these stones is expensive because the supply is limited.

Uvarovite garnet is bright green and quite brittle; this makes it difficult to cut for jewelry. Its supply is also sporadic and it's not much seen on the market.

Garnets are most commonly a dark red hue, but because it has so many chemical variations is can be found in any color except blue. A few garnets even change color when viewed under natural or incandescent light. Because of this, garnets are sometimes mislabeled (either creatively or misleadingly) as, for example, "American ruby" or "Oregon jade".

History

The word "garnet" is derived from the Latin word granatus, "grain", referring to the way crystals resemble grains or seeds embedded in the crystalline matrix. It has been used as a gemstone since prehistory, but was first used industrially to coat sandpaper in 1878. Today, industrial use of garnets outpace its use as a gemstone by about five hundred times.

Ancient Egyptians were known to use garnet gemstones as early as 3500 BC. Asiatic tribes carved garnets into bullets in the belief that their fiery color would inflict more deadly wounds. In ancient Greece, Alexander the Great popularized the cutting of cameos from gemstones and garnets (mainly pyrope, from Greek pyropos meaning "fire-eyed") were widely used for this purpose. Persians considered garnet to be a royal stone suitable for bearing the image of their king.

Gar"net (?), n. [OE. gernet, grenat, OF. grenet,grenat, F. grenat, LL. granatus, fr. L. granatum pomegranate, granatus having many grains or seeds, fr. granum grain, seed. So called from its resemblance in color and shape to the grains or seeds of the pomegranate. See Grain, and cf. Grenade, Pomegranate.] Min.

A mineral having many varieties differing in color and in their constituents, but with the same crystallization (isometric), and conforming to the same general chemical formula. The commonest color is red, the luster is vitreous, and the hardness greater than that of quartz. The dodecahedron and trapezohedron are the common forms.

⇒ There are also white, green, yellow, brown, and black varieties. The garnet is a silicate, the bases being aluminia lime (grossularite, essonite, or cinnamon stone), or aluminia magnesia (pyrope), or aluminia iron (almandine), or aluminia manganese (spessartite), or iron lime (common garnet, melanite, allochroite), or chromium lime (ouvarovite, color emerald green). The transparent red varieties are used as gems. The garnet was, in part, the carbuncle of the ancients. Garnet is a very common mineral in gneiss and mica slate.

Garnet berryBot., the red currant; -- so called from its transparent red color. -- Garnet brownChem., an artificial dyestuff, produced as an explosive brown crystalline substance with a green or golden luster. It consists of the potassium salt of a complex cyanogen derivative of picric acid.